I’ve had an email from someone who has been laboriously placing online a medieval Latin text. It’s one of those catalogues of patriarchs and kings, with snippets of simple Latin in between. Unfortunately our friend doesn’t have much Latin himself, so is rather stuck. Can anyone help him? I’d do it, if I wasn’t so busy. He’s willing to pay something.
Here’s what he writes:
I’ve already translated the names, the formulaic stuff and the simpler Latin myself, so there is only about 30 per cent of the text left to do: I would guess about 1,500 words of the text defeats me. I hear what you are saying about the rates: perhaps it isn’t enough. The late Wilhelm Neuss looked at some of this text and pronounced some of the phrasing to be sheer nonsense (by an idiot copyist) and I daresay a translator needs the courage to say when something is untranslatable.
Yes, it would be a huge help if you could mention on your blog that I have a Late Antique Latin text and need some paid help … links to the two pages:http://www.piggin.net/stemmahist/biblicalnomina.htm
http://www.piggin.net/stemmahist/biblicaltimeline.htmI’ve written a note on the pages themselves explaining what help I actually need.
Send an email to
if you can help. And if you get stuck with some horrible bit of Latin, post it in the comments here and we’ll have a look!
Perhaps the online tools have added latin, I am not sure. But I know there are some free downloadedable converters. I remember years ago, I wanted to read Giordani Bruno’s “The Art of Memory”. I had picked it out as a book over the years that might actually be work reading to learn tips and tricks that could allow someone to remember large tracks of a speech, or just… anything…
I kept an eye out for the book for years, and then started to look a bit harder at one time. I was able to eventually find the text online FREE! yeah! the only problem is that it was in latin, BOO. (since I don’t know a stitch of latin)
Well, I looked around a bit more, then I downloaded a latin converter that included Latin to English. Then I installed it, placed each sentence from the book into the translator. It took some time, but I was able to read the book.
IMPORTANT NOTE – never tell a friend of your that KNOWS that language that you are doing what I recommend above. You will never herd the end of it. You will be constantly badgered with many reasons that what I did was a crazy, stupid, and possibly even amoral thing to do. So if you don’t want that hassle, just don’t tell them.
But I can tell you, I was able to read a complete book in Latin doing that. Perhaps it will work for your friend.
Wrapping up the loose end in case someone stumbles on this post in the distant future: a Latin translator stepped forward, the job was done, and the results are here:
Tabulated Transcript 1: Genealogia
ab Adam usque ad Christum per ordines linearum
Tabulated Transcript 2: Families Not Kin with Christ
Tabulated Transcript 3: The Integrated
Timeline
Tabulated Transcript 4: The Later Interpolations
Thanks for the help.
Thank you so much for wrapping this up. You never know what a Google search will find, and this will save you and I various emails at some unspecified time in the future.